Hosting a GSE Team
The District 6220 Approach to Hosting a GSE
Team
The objectives of the GSE
program emphasizes international understanding and the development
of meaningful relationships with exchange districts. The GSE program
seeks both to strengthen the historical and cultural ties between
our district and other parts of the world and to expand, and even
stretch, the cultural experience of Rotary members and their
communities.
This means we are committed to a
number of features of hosting visiting teams. First, we believe in
home stays. Hosting visiting teams members in our homes
provides a unique opportunity to see how we live and how we approach
the most basis facets of our lives. In turn, we get to know our
visitors in a way that we would not know them if they did not share
our home and our families with us. Secondly, we want to provide a
complete and authentic view of our communities and our professions.
We schedule visiting teams to observe and experience those things in
our communities that we are most proud of, as well as those things
from which they might learn of our struggles and the ways in which
we are trying to deal with them. We try to schedule team members
with the best in their profession during vocational days. But, we
make sure that they also learn about the challenges faced by persons
in their fields of work in our country. Finally, we take seriously
the health and well being of visiting team members while they
are in our district. This means planning a schedule with a proper
pace, sufficient free time, and attention to the individual needs of
team members. We want our visiting teams to see and experience
everything in our district, and we want them to work hard at their
objectives. But, we also want them to have fun together as a team
and with us as their hosts...and new friends!
Practically speaking, hosting a
visiting team means committing 3 or 4 days to an intensive
experience of getting to know five strangers from another land and
another culture, providing for their basic needs, helping them learn
about things important to them and to us, and having some fun along
the way.
We encourage clubs to work
together to plan and then host visiting teams. Rather than two or
more clubs in the same or adjacent towns planning separate one or
two day schedules of home stays and activities, we ask clubs to work
together to plan a more integrated and better paced three or four
day schedule. Hosting clubs work with the GSE Committee to make sure
the visiting team has the widest range of experiences and avoids
redundancy in the activities planned for team.
We ask clubs to make the GSE the
focus of their Rotary activities during the team's stay in their
communities. This means involving a large number of members, and not
just the GSE Committee and a few interested others, in the
activities planned for the visiting team.
We try to know as much as
possible about the visiting team members before they arrive. With
this information we plan activities to meet the vocational and
personal interests of each team member. Knowing about their
families, their vocation, and their interests helps us in the short
time they are with us to develop the meaningful relationships that
are an objective of the GSE program in District 6220.
Being Selected as Host Club
Each year approximately six
months prior to the scheduled exchange the GSE Committee announces
to all clubs - in the district newsletter, on the district's web
site, and in a letter to GSE chairmen and club presidents the
opportunity to host the visiting team. Those clubs that indicate an
interest in hosting the team are then considered as a four of five
itinerary is put together for the team. Clubs in the same or
adjacent communities are asked to cooperate in planning a hosting.
If areas of the district are not represented in the itinerary, clubs
are asked to consider hosting the team. The intention is to involve
as many clubs in as many regions of the district as possible.
Clubs that have not hosted
recently are given a preference in selection host or lead clubs.
Clubs that are perceived to have done an outstanding job of hosting
in the past are given a preference, also.